'game lacks wealth of black superstar power'

(ESPN) – An ongoing referendum is taking place in America, a trial in which we, the people, seem to be both plaintiff and defendant.

The same questions are being asked that have always been asked, especially in an election year, but the consequences of those answers no longer seem to result merely in a difference of opinion.

Today, they either confirm that our people, institutions and beliefs are the allies we thought them to be, or they serve as sudden, irreparable proof that our friends and neighbors were never quite friends or neighbors. We assumed too much about the progress we thought we made, believed we were closer than we actually were.

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick didn’t start this referendum, but he has become, like Crispus Attucks or Curt Flood or Rodney King, the flashpoint of a reckoning much larger than himself and long overdue.

He stood up by kneeling down, and not only has he yet to move, but others — many black men and at least one white woman, soccer player Megan Rapinoe — are now kneeling with him.

These are the gestures we say we respect: the tough, uncompromising American virtue of commitment and conviction, of making it plain in the face of opposition and being right.

Adam Jones, the brilliant Baltimore Orioles center fielder, also made it plain that baseball, the original civil rights sport with the deepest connection to the American story of sports and social justice, won’t willingly be one of the fronts where the battle is fought.

Baseball, Jones said, is not the black-dominated world of football or basketball, saying that the game lacks the untouchable wealth of black superstar power, and even a reputable volume of rank and file for it to support a similar form of protest.

In demographic and attitude, Jones said baseball is “a white man’s game.”